Blocked dunnies and leaky pipes: Rio's Olympic Village deemed 'unlivable'

There’s more bad news out of Rio de Janeiro this morning, as the Olympic Village has been deemed “unlivable.”

No, the Australian Olympic Committee isn’t just being precious about small rooms and the choice of paint colour – the apartments are having major issues with their plumbing and electrical services.

With less than two weeks to go before the opening ceremony, there is no confirmation about when the athletes will be able to move in – which is probably a good thing, as the buildings sound like absolute death traps.

Kitty Chiller, chef de mission of the Australian Olympic Community, made a statement late last night: “For over a week now AOC staff have been working long hours to get our section of the village ready for our athletes.” She went on to cite a list of problems that included “Blocked toilets, leaking pipes, exposed wiring, darkened stairwells where no lighting has been installed and dirty floors in need of a massive clean.”

In order to get a sense of how bad the problem really is, ‘stress tests’ were performed at the apartments last week; a number of taps and toilets being simultaneously used, over a number of floors, to simulate real-life use once the athletes move in.

“The system failed. Water came down walls, there was a strong smell of gas in some apartments and there was ‘shorting’ in the electrical wiring,” noted Chiller.

The problem is not only impacting Australian athletes, but also those from New Zealand and Great Britain.

Members of the Rio organising committee have promised that tradesmen will be making repairs as soon as possible, but with the issues as significant as they are, no promises were made about when work would be completed.

This isn’t really surprising considering Eduardo da Costa Paes, mayor of Rio de Janeiro, has offered up a kangaroo as a solution to the problem. Apparently, we’re a pack of whingers and just need one of our marsupial friends to make us feel at home.

Whaaaa?

Obviously, these issues raise questions about the preparedness of Rio for the Olympic Games as a whole – with many fearing that the Brazilian capital’s infrastructure will simply fail to cope with the sheer volume of people set to arrive.

At this stage, it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see how things pan out.

The fate of the buildings following the Games will also be interesting to follow. Former Olympic Villages aren’t considered hot property, even when they’re well-built.

First published on Techly as More Bad News: Olympic village deemed ‘unlivable’